Tourists fail to match South Africa’s sustained intensity

It feels too early to start shouting this, so let’s whisper it: it looks like South Africa are back. Perhaps not back to their absolute best and definitely not back to the team they were when they were No.1, but back in business.

This series win is not going to become the stuff of legend and there were times when it seemed like New Zealand cared it about it more – after all, it is New Zealand who have never won a series against South Africa – but it will become seen as the marker for when South Africa began anew.

Calling themselves a team in transition more than two years after the retirements of Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis and four years after Mark Boucher’s had become a crutch, and South Africa knew it. They had already transitioned but they did not like what they had transitioned into. They were a team stuck in a rut. They lost five out of eight Tests last summer, in their worst season since readmission, and were badly affected by injuries and uncertainty.

To solve those problems, they did not hold a training camp before the series. They sat around and talked.

A large group of members of the national squad and those who might be considered for selection in the next few years were summoned to a bonding and strategy session. They plotted what they have started to call their “new mission.” They don’t want to share all the details but they have revealed that part of the plan will be to play more aggressively.

In their first attempt at applying that, in Durban, it failed when over-eager batsmen gave their wickets away. In their second, at Centurion, they attacked with their traditional strength – the bowling – and it worked as well, if not better than it always has.

Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada have formed a formidable fast-bowling trio that offers everything from swing and seam movement to pace and bounce but those are only half the reason they are so dangerous. The other half is that they just don’t let up. Philander is the one with the reputation for …

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